My Far East Adventure

It could have been a decision I lived to regret when, in my first week at Nottingham Trent University after leaving Easingwold School, I signed up to raise over £2400.00 for charity by doing a 180km trek along the Great Wall of China.  The charity, Childreach International is an international children’s development organisation promoting sustainable grassroots projects across the globe. Their goal is to unlock a child’s true potential though increasing access to education, health, child rights and protection. It seemed like a really good cause, and it also offered an opportunity to challenge myself in a country I had long been curious about, and had always wanted to visit Despite help from the charity, the task of raising that amount of money proved challenging in itself. But after all the hard work on June the 13th the 19 students in the team finally flew off to China to begin the real challenge. Despite being jet lagged, day one began at the Dragons Head, where the Wall meets the Pacific Ocean. This was a gruelling 4 peak hike on one of their hottest days of the year. Luckily the following day was considerably easier. This section was along a ruined section of the wall so was mostly in the shade of the jungle. The challenges only got harder from here. On the third day of the wall the group headed up a famous section, aptly named Heaven’s Ladder. This section involved climbing 600 steps before reaching the bottom of the ladder and a further 300 very steep steps to climb to the top. On day 5 we headed off on a six hour trek along a ruined section of the wall, a journey which involved a short boat ride to enjoy the incredible scenery of the Chinese hills surrounding them. That night the group got its first experience of Chinese home life as we stayed with a small local family.  On the final day the group walked along a restored section of the wall. All the members completed this section with a sprint finish and then slid down the wall on a toboggan. All their efforts were rewarded that night with a Peking Duck roast and a trip to the theatre to see a troupe of Chinese acrobats.After the hike was completed we stayed in China for a further 10 days. Travelling around on sleeper trains we visited various attractions such as the Terracotta Warriors, the Ming Tombs, the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, the Silk Market and the Birds Nest Olympic stadium. On the final night  we visited the Water Cube where the Olympic swimming was held in 2008 and we were lucky enough to swim in the same pool as the Olympians four years ago.I raised £2,456.58 and between the whole team a massive £50,569.90 was collected for Child Reach International. I would like to express my appreciation to everyone who donated particularly Easingwold Primary School who donated half of their Charity collection from their Easter concert, the Co-op Long Street who allowed me to spend a day bag packing there,  Barbe-Q and Purdys who both held donation pots for me and D-tail Plants, Shipton who made an incredible donation of £50. Jeanna Parkinson


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